FBI Documents Hint at Israeli Collusion with 2016 Trump Campaign
Previously sealed FBI documents indicate close contacts between Israel and
the Trump campaign and that the Mueller investigation found evidence of
Israeli involvement, but largely redacted it.
by Alison Weir
May 04th, 2020
By Alison Weir
Menifee, CA (IAK) Newly released FBI documents suggest that Israeli
government officials were in contact with the 2016 Trump presidential
campaign and offered critical intel.
In one of the extensively redacted documents, an official who appears to be
an Israeli minister warns that Trump was going to be defeated unless we
intervene. He goes on to tell a Trump campaign official: The key is in
your hands.
The previously classified documents were released in response to a lawsuit
brought by the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and the
Washington Post. The unsealed documents suggest that rather than Russia, it
was Israel that covertly interfered in the election.
While all these media companies except one seem to have ignored the apparent
Israeli connection revealed in the FBI documents, Israeli media have been
quick to jump on it.
Israels i24 News reports:
Newly released documents from the FBI suggest that Roger Stone, a senior
aide in the 2016 Trump campaign, had one or more high-ranking contacts in
the Israeli government willing to help the then-Republican Party nominee win
the presidential election.
Israels Haaretz newspaper reports:
Tantalizing hints of alleged clandestine contacts came to light in recent
publication of redacted FBI documents.
The Times of Israel (TOI) the first to report on this, states:
The FBI material, which is heavily redacted, includes one explicit reference
to Israel and one to Jerusalem, and a series of references to a minister, a
cabinet minister, a minister without portfolio in the cabinet dealing with
issues concerning defense and foreign affairs, the PM, and the Prime
Minister.
TOI points out: Benjamin Netanyahu was Israels prime minister in 2016,
and reports circumstantial evidence that the PM mentioned in the document
refers to Netanyahu:
One reference to the unnamed PM in the material reads as follows: On or
about June 28, 2016, [NAME REDACTED] messaged STONE, RETURNING TO DC AFTER
URGENT CONSULTATIONS WITH PM IN ROME.MUST MEET WITH YOU WED. EVE AND WITH DJ
TRUMP THURSDAY IN NYC. Netanyahu made a state visit to Italy at the end of
June 2016.
TOI also notes that the Israeli government included a minister without
portfolio, Tzachi Hanegbi, appointed in May with responsibility for defense
and foreign affairs.
Haaretz also names Hanebi as the likely contact, and confirms that he was
in the United States on the dates mentioned, attending, among other things,
a roll out of the first Israeli F-35 jet at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort
Worth, Texas.
The previously classified FBI affidavit says: On or about August 12, 2016,
[name redacted] messaged STONE, Roger, hello from Jerusalem. Any progress?
He is going to be defeated unless we intervene. We have critical intell. The
key is in your hands! Back in the US next week.
Another section of the affidavit states: On August 20, 2016, CORSI told
STONE that they needed to meet with [name redacted] to determine what if
anything Israel plans to do in Oct. (Corsi refers to Jerome Corsi, a
pro-Israel commentator and author known for extremist statements.)
Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump who worked on the 2016
campaign, was convicted last year in the Robert Mueller investigation into
alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Stone has denied wrongdoing, consistently criticizing the accusations
against him as politically motivated. Numerous analysts have found the
Russiagate theory unconvincing, and the American Bar Association reported
that Muellers investigation did not find sufficient evidence that
President Donald Trumps campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the
United States 2016 election.
There have been previous suggestions that it was Israel that had most worked
to influence the election.
Among others, MIT Professor emeritus Noam Chomsky discussed Israeli
electoral interference on the news program Democracy Now):
If youre interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the
Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared
with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support.
Mueller investigation redacted Israeli involvement
The Mueller investigation similarly revealed indications of Israeli
interference in the election, but Haaretz reports that this was largely
hidden.
The Israeli newspaper reports: References to some sort of Israeli
involvement in Trumps 2016 campaign cropped up during Robert Muellers
official investigation of the so-called Russia collusion affair, but were
thoroughly redacted.
Haaretz continues: A disproportionately large number of people
investigated or questioned in the Mueller probe oligarchs, advisers and
cyber specialists also had ties to the Israeli establishment.
The article goes on to report: Perhaps its worth mentioning that both
Stone and convicted Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort were close
collaborators with Netanyahus legendary strategist and world-class dirty
campaigner, the late Arthur Finkelstein. They and others were known as
Arthurs boys.
Arthur Finkelstein
Arthur Finkelstein (right) with the Netanyahus in 1999. Photo | Israeli GPO
The Justice Department originally tried to keep the FBI documents
classified. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky claimed that releasing
them would threaten ongoing investigations and the privacy of third
parties. The unsealed document now suggests that one of the third parties
being protected was Israel.
Zelinsky is a longtime Israel advocate who had been part of Muellers team.
He previously lived in Israel and served as a law clerk for the Israeli
Supreme Court. He is currently active in a Baltimore synagogue that has
close connections to Israel.
Israel partisans are major campaign donors
While such direct ties to the Israeli government have rarely been proven,
pro-Israel lobbyists have long been known to play an important role in U.S.
Middle East policies.
Megadonor Sheldon Adelson is widely credited with driving Trumps Mideast
policies. (Adelson once said that he regretted serving in the U.S. Army
instead of the Israeli military.) Adelson is just one of the pro-Israel
billionaires funding Republicans.
The same situation has long occurred with the Democratic party. The
Clintons policies were similarly influenced by Israeli megadonor Haim
Saban. Many of the recent Democratic candidates were reliant on campaign
donations from Israel partisans. Pete Buttigieg, for example, had 18
pro-Israel billionaires supporting him.
Sometimes Democratic and Republican donors have worked together on behalf of
Israel. Adelson and Saban, for example, joined forces in a 2015 summit in
Las Vegas to raise money for Israel activism. Participation was limited to
individuals who would pledge at least a million dollars. In 2018 Saban and
Republican donor Paul singer co-hosted a dinner for the Trump peace team.
Americans have the right to the full facts
Former CIA and military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi says that the
Justice Department should un-redact the portions regarding Israel.
Giraldi, who is executive director of the Council for the National Interest,
says:
We already know that Israel interceded by way of Jared Kushner and Michael
Flynn to interfere with a U.N. vote while Barack Obama was still in office.
Americans need the full facts on outside interference in our elections and
our foreign policy.
We give Israel over $10 million per day and have the right to know to what
degree Israel was guilty of corrupting our elected officials and
manipulating our political process.
Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton, Julian Assange
The intelligence referred to is assumed to be the various emails and memos
that were then published later that year by Wikileaks, and this is borne out
by other sections of the FBI documents.
These Wikileaks documents revealed the Democratic Party establishments
manipulations to defeat Bernie Sanders and nominate Hillary Clinton, how the
Clinton Foundation was used for personal enrichment, CNN commentator and DNC
Chair Donna Brazile giving Hillarys campaign the questions ahead of the
debates, Hillarys politically embarrassing, paid speeches to Wall Street
donors, etc.
Wikileaks revelations in later years also ended up exposing Israeli actions.
Among other things, Wikileaks revealed Israeli plans to keep Gaza on the
brink of collapse, to use violence against Palestinian nonviolence, and to
make war upon civilians.
Wikileaks exposed a memo that helped kill a half million people in Syria.
The memo, by U.S. diplomat James Rubin, said that bringing down Assad
would be a massive boon to Israels security.
Wikileaks also exposed the fraudulence of Russiagate.
In his years running Wikileaks, founder Julian Assange published information
that exposed corruption and malfeasance by a wide variety of actors,
including the U.S. government. He is now in prison in Britain for this
crime, his health steadily deteriorating under conditions that have been
called torture.
It is unclear to what degree Wikileaks revelations played a role in Trumps
win.
The U.S. media largely avoided the information Wikileaks exposed, and
instead focused on allegations of a supposed Russian connection.
The fact is that Hillary had grown increasingly unpopular, failed to connect
with many working Americans, and voters have become increasingly
anti-establishment and displeased with the extremely costly and tragic
military actions she favored.
However, even if Wikileaks was a minor factor, there is no doubt that its
exposés were unfavorable for the Clintons and the Democratic establishment.
Therefore, it is interesting to see that even with Republican Donald Trump
in office, the U.S. government continues to pursue Assange. Perhaps future
leaks will clarify what or who is driving this.